What is One of the Most Underappreciated Functions of NFTs?
If you are not familiar with the Web 3 space, it is moving incredibly fast. In fact, it is moving faster than people in the space often realize. The uses for the blockchain technology are only beginning to be tapped and developers are in very short supply.
One of the areas most frequently mentioned parts of blockchain uses in the public sphere are NFTs. If you have heard anything about them, likely it has been in the context of art or crazy market prices, however, NFTs can serve many functions. One of the most underappreciated yet powerful benefits that NFTs or tokens provide is access.
Access = Gateway
Access can mean a lot of different things, but at its core, we should think of it as a gateway. For example, if you have an Amazon Prime subscription you gain access to free shipping along with the Amazon streaming network. You can still have an Amazon account and order items from Amazon without Prime, but if you do, you will pay for shipping. The Amazon Prime subscription is the gateway.
Business Gateway
NFTs can provide this same type of business gateway. It could be the way to login to an online account in order to make purchase where your wallet functions in the place of a username and password. The NFT could function like a discount code at an online or bricks and mortar checkout — just connect your wallet showing proof of NFT ownership and a discount is applied. Another option could be access to specific products that are not available to the general public. Each of these are great ways to reward customers and potential customers for your business.
I recently heard about the following example. A wedding photographer worked with a couple to create a POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) for the wedding. POAPs (https://poap.xyz/) are a type of NFT associated with attending or being part of an event and function like a memento (think ticket stub or picture at the event). In this case, there was a keepsake photograph of the couple as the image on the NFT. The photographer then used the POAP to provide a discount code for photography that was available for the next six months to anyone who had the POAP.
Community Gateway
NFTs can also provide access to a group or to specific individuals. I am not part of the project yet (hopefully in the future), but Crypto Packaged Goods (https://www.cryptopackagedgoods.com/) looks like a fascinating community for creators in the Web 3 space. They have two different series of NFTs that provide different levels of access within the community. You can still be part of their Telegram network, but having one of the NFTs provides you further access for collaboration.
NFT holders (often referred to as HODlers in the NFT space) within the same project can experience a sense of esprit de corps and provides common ground between individuals. I am part of the Lazy Lions community (https://www.lazylionsnft.com/). If I were to meet someone for the first time and discover they were part of that project too, it is a bond or connection that we would share, and will literally change the tone conversation.
In this way, NFTs can work like an introduction between people and that introduction can open doors that might not be available normally. It is networking in a very tangible way.
Information Gateway
NFTs are great ways to provide information and content to people in a community. You can gate part or all of your content such that owning an NFT provides the login to access it. Coaching groups or mastermind types of programs could use this same methodology whereby NFT owners gain access to the group an in turn, the knowledge and experience of the group. If you have a subscription service for content, an NFT could be a way to reward subscribers or provide exclusive content to a subgroup of your subscribers. The options can be as varied as your imagination.
So What?
There are lots of technological uses for the blockchain, including NFTs. As the adoption of the technology continues to become more mainstream, businesses need to think through whether to include NFTs as part of their customer journey and community development. Access is one of the biggest values that NFTs provide.
